Fulfilling Solar's Destiny with SunDrive

SunDrive is a solar technology company aiming to create low cost, energy efficient and more material abundant solar cells.

“We are in a very fragile period in time. Everything that we are doing is to try and accelerate the day in which we can continue to progress as a civilisation without the expense of destroying the environment” says SunDrive co-founder Vince Allen.

In today’s episode, SunDrive’s co-founders will discuss their first steps to building a category defining business. We’ll also hear from Blackbird co-founder and Partner Niki Scevak on the importance of milestones and the backlash from the cleantech graveyard.

As promised, head to https://www.sundrivesolar.com/ to learn more about SunDrive.

Episode interviewees: SunDrive co-founders Vince Allen, David Hu and Blackbird Partner Niki Scevak.

Key topics covered:

• Australia can lead the world in solar energy
• SunDrive’s vision, product and business model
• Vince and David’s founding story

The best of Vince & David:

“We have everything that's needed for Australia to be the first solid power developed country.”

“Today only 3% of the world's electricity comes from solar. There is still a long road ahead of us. And the technology today is not well suited for the longer term.”

“Although the current solar cell structures have suited us well to get to this point, more advanced solar cells are going to be needed and we need to get around this silver problem. Copper is a thousand times more abundant than silver and a hundred times cheaper than silver.”

“We’re not in the business of trying to manufacture the entire value chain. We’re focusing on our copper step - the last, most critical step in the solar cell manufacturing process.”

“We are in a very fragile period in time. Everything that we are doing is to try and accelerate the day in which we can continue to progress as a civilisation without the expense of destroying the environment.”

“You have to find somebody you trust and who shares the same values, vision and moral standards - everything.”

“As soon as you bring up working on Cleantech, they’re already running for the hills.”

Niki Scevak on SunDrive:

“When we make an investment at Blackbird, we think very deeply about what are the three most important things that need to happen to show the unit of progress in the first seed round. SunDrive smashed all of those milestones.”

“The road we’re on, using silver in solar panels, is a dead end road. Overall we’re just going to run out of silver to build the solar panels.”

“I think everyone at Blackbird believes that a world powered by the sun is a world we want to be in, and that SunDrive can produce a high margin, great product or process that fits into that world.”

“You can make so much progress with so little capital and so little time, and Vince, Dave and the team have done everything that they hoped to do in the seed round, and they’re very down to earth.”

“A lot of hardware startups can prove something in the lab, in a small way, but they fall over when they try to make a lot of money from it or they try to go mainstream.”

“We’re open to investing and not ruining the environment. What are the activities we’re doing that are not sustainable and let’s fix those activities. We’d love to invest in those new solutions and new ways of going about things.”